The Jim Crow Laws

There was no clarification on what race would be considered white or what would be considered black. During this incident, “Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act.”(Duignan 2017). Judge Ferguson ruled that the separation was fair and did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The state Supreme Court also backed up this decision. The case was brought to the Supreme Court and "The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between the two races did not conflict with the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition." (History.com Staff 2009). This decision set the key precedent of Separate but Equal in the United States. Racial segregation kept growing.

In June 1892 Homer A. Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad and sat in the car designated for whites only. Plessy was of mixed African and European ancestry, and he looked white. Because the Citizens Committee wanted to challenge the segregation law in court, it alerted railroad officials that Plessy would be sitting in the whites only car, even though he was partly of African descent. Plessy was arrested and brought to court for arraignment before Judge John H. Ferguson of the U.S. District Court in Louisiana. Plessy then attempted to halt the trial by suing Ferguson on the grounds that the segregation law was unconstitutional.

Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that separated non-colored people from colored people. I feel that these set of laws are very cruel. In this writing prompt i will be talking about the few ways that shows Jim Crow laws separate white from black.

Jim Crow laws dominated every aspect of African American life from its inception after Reconstruction up to the civil rights era and its affects can still be felt today. During this era of Jim Crow African Americans had different ways of coping with these oppressive laws. These ways of coping included these three methods, migration, agitation and accommodation. Out of these three methods the most effective at defying Jim Crow laws and fighting segregation was agitation.

The Jim Crow laws were everything but fair, and equal. Jim Crow is the name they used in the laws on separating the African Americans from the Caucasian men and women. These laws deprived African Americans from their civil rights because of the many things they were not allowed to experience due to these laws. Jim Crow laws oppressed the educational rights, voting rights, and social freedoms of American citizens, this essay will be discussing the oppression of these rights and freedoms.

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

“The Jim Crow era was one of struggle -- not only for the victims of violence, discrimination, and poverty, but by those who worked to challenge (or promote) segregation in the South” (“Jim Crow Stories”). It is important to know the history of this significant period where everyone was treated differently based on how they looked instead of their character. During the Jim Crow era, the lives of African Americans were severely restricted making it difficult for them to succeed in everyday life.

1. Jim crow laws were started and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the southern united states. Enacted after the reconstruction period, these laws contained in forces until 1966

In 1892, Homer Plessy was a passenger in a railroad and who refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court from New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments. Although, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1896, Plessy v Ferguson inculcated the “separate but equal” doctrine and passed laws entailing the segregation of races, arguing that Jim Crow laws were constitutional. The case was devastating for African Americans allowing the oppression of an entire race. The Supreme Court system in practice was separate and unequal;

In 1896, the court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson ruled that the states had the right to legally segregate public facilities. This court ruling fueled the fire of Southerners in regards to race relations, leading to the Jim Crow laws. These laws went as far as to say blacks could not cut a white person’s hair, drink from the same water fountain as a white person, and established a test for blacks to take prior to getting a ballot.

The US civil rights movement set out to achieve equality in America by ending racial discrimination, which was enforced after 1865 after the 13th Amendment came into place. This took place after the end of the civil war and proceeded to be the beginning of the movement- despite the US civil right movement starting in 1865 the movement only peaked during the 1950s and 60s. After the abolition of slavery a year later the Jim Crow laws were set in place in order to control the African-Americans. These laws were introduced in 1877 and focused on the segregation of black and white people in America. The Jim Crow laws limited black individuals by restricting them from sitting on the same benches, drinking water and having education at the same place as white people.

The overall way race was handled, specifically, the Jim Crow laws were wrong because of the idea that it was okay to be separate but equal. Black people were allowed to vote, attend school, and were basically offered all of the same opportunities as a White person...right? Wrong. This might have been true if you were African American and lived in Union (Northern) states, but in the Confederate (Southern) states, African Americans were not treated the same. In the south, Black and White people were separate, but in no way equal.

Jim Crow laws were statewide and local laws in the lateral Southern part of the United States used to separate whites and non-Whites (colored, Negro, Mongolian, Hindu, Malaysian, etc.) from working, learning and even playing together. Jim Crow laws were named after minstrel actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who usually put on shows portraying a dim, unintelligent black slave. These laws were established to ensure that non-Whites were “put in their place” and “stayed there” by segregating their work, educational and recreational activity.

Jim Crow Laws were laws passed by Southern state and local governments to separate white and black people in both public and private facilities. These laws were a big deal for the Chinese, Mexicans, and Native Americans. For the Chinese, the Jim Crow Laws excluded them. There were so many Chinese immigrants working that whites started to become worried about losing their jobs, so congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting Chinese immigration to the US. For the Mexicans, this meant difficult conditions due to discrimination. They faced hard labor working for railroads as well as being a major source of agricultural labor. Lastly, Native Americans faced racial segregation everywhere they went. This included hospitals, parks, schools, and transportation systems. Not only were they facing segregation and discrimination, but they also had to face racial etiquette, which basically meant that they had to show respect to whites because whites were considered superior. All of this racial segregation began in the 1900’s this movie took place around the 1950’s which was when they started to make strides in segregation. At this time, people started to make a stand against racial segregation, and they slowly started to get their way. Other races began to be more mixed with whites and there was less segregation.

I believe Jim Crow laws were a cruel camouflaged way of segregating African Americans because the cruelty of this were affecting the education and physiological health of the individuals involved, they made life unequal, and promoted discrimination.